Use Cases 

Germany produces around 12 to 18 million tons of food waste within a year, around half of it has its origin in private households and is thrown away unused (Heinrich, 2020, p. 3). Food waste is a relevant topic that is particularly present in industrialized countries. Especially in these countries, the per capita waste of food is high (ibid, p. 7). In addition to mass production, the problem has also arisen from the fact that food shelf life is not accurately assessed and food that is still edible is thrown away unused. In several studies, participants often justify their food waste based on the “best before date” of products. Consumers often misjudge the freshness of their products and therefore food is often thrown away although it is in a still edible state. The biggest part of these thrown away food is fresh foods like fruits and vegetables. In addition, consumer often do not store foods optimally, which also influences the shelf life of foods and can lead to a faster expiration of the food (ibid, p. 3 - 17). 

Problems with household waste can be traced back to various causes, such as a lack of interest, a lack of sense of responsibility, but also poor communication and knowledge about the shelf life and storage of food (ibid, p. 17). That is why we have set ourselves the goal of developing SeeFresh to counteract food waste in private households with a large number of functionalities in our application. 

With its implementation, SeeFresh primarily addresses environmentally conscious individuals, families, and shared flats. The focus is on visualizing the freshness of food. SeeFresh is designed to provide users an appealing way to keep a smart inventory that informs users about their inventory and the shelf life of their food. The shelf life of the food will be calculated for the users and then visualized for them. Additionally, users can change the date of expiration by hand. 

In the app, the user should be able to manage an inventory by scanning the receipts of their last purchases. The products are then automatically entered into the inventory. Therefore, the product is automatically entered to its recommended optimal storage. The storage and products can be then changed manually by the user in the application. To ensure that the information in the application is kept up to date, a menu field opens when the application is started, in which the current information can be changed. 

SeeFresh will pursue a freemium concept with two versions. The free version contains advertisements. The premium version allows users to pay a subscription to ban ads and to have access to additional features. In later extensions, these features will include, for example, recipe suggestions based on food quantities and available food. SeeFresh – a smart Inventory 

Application Scenarios 

SeeFresh is intended to be applicable in various scenarios for the user. On the one hand, the app is able to inform the user in an appropriate way about their foods. Therefore, users should be informed about the freshness of their products. For this, users should be able to see the products that are stored in their personal smart inventory. When products lose their shelf life, users will be able to see a visualization of this and additionally be notified. In the prototype implemented by email notification. In the real app, this should be realized by push notifications. This is intended to make users more aware of their food and to counteract food waste. 

On the other hand, the app should allow easy handling of the inventory. Therefore, users will be able to scan their receipts to keep and update the inventory of their food. This is particularly relevant if users are rarely at home or live in a shared apartment. With SeeFresh, they get informed about the products that they already own in order to avoid unnecessary purchases and, in turn, to counteract food waste. 

This solution aims to draw attention to food waste and provide information to the user. The focus is on informing users about their food, including how it is best stored and how their shelf life develops over time. 

Team
Diana Geibel, Tuan An Ha, Jan Kewitz, Timothee Kinkel

Use cases:

Rent a bike instead of buy one. People need a bike temporarily for their everyday life, but they don't want to buy one. For example, because their bike was stolen or is in repair and they still need to ride to work and need a replacement until they buy a new bike or it is back from repair. Another example could be that a user needs a bike only irregularly for freetime activities. Therefore, it is not worth buying one.  In this case, one can book a bike via our app and negotiate the price and the rental period with the bike owner in a flexible way. This way you don't need to buy a bike and you can quickly get one that would otherwise not be used. 

Rent a bike as tourist. When one travels to a city, one obviously doesn't have a own bike in the travel destination. However, a bike offers a cost-effective, flexible way to explore a city and to visit sights.. Another advantage is that this is possible without being tied to public transport or tourist trips. In addition, you do not have to pay a significantly more expensive rental car, which in large cities anyway brings mainly disadvantages.  In this case, travelers can rent a bike at a reasonable price via our app for the duration of their stay and explore the city with it. Also, one can choose between different types of bikes and book them according to their plans. 

Rent a specific bike for a specific purpose. Many people own a bicycle for everyday use. However, from time to time, mostly for freetime activities, they need a special bike. For example, a mountain bike for a tour through the forest or a racing bike to make a larger tour with friends. Likewise, it is possible to need a specific bike for a few weeks for a competition preparation or a vacation. Also, it is possible to need a cargo bike for transportation. In all these cases, it makes little sense to buy an expensive bike for such a purpose. In these cases, people can simply pick an appropriate offer in our app and rent that bike. 

Try out a bike before you buy it. Particularly when it comes to purchasing decisions regarding more expensive products, customers like to test various products beforehand without commitment and try out possible alternatives. This minimizes the risk of making the wrong decision and helps them find the best product for their needs. When bike dealers offer their different bikes models for rent in our app, it gives customers the chance to try out different bikes without commitment before they have to make a purchase decision. 

Make money with your unused bike. Many people buy bicycles, but do not use them very often. Thus, there are also people who own several bikes, for different purposes. For example, a bike for everyday purposes and a road bike, mountain bike or downhill bike for free time. Especially these bikes stand most of the time unused in the garage or in the basement. Our app offers the owners of such bikes the opportunity to earn money with the bikes standing around by renting them through our app. 

As a bike store, let customers test your bikes. As the owner of a bicycle store, one has among other things the following two concerns: (1) One would like to attract new customers with the lowest possible advertising costs. (2) One wants that these customers are also satisfied with the products after the purchase, in order to avoid unnecessary trouble with returns. Since bike stores can also appear in the app as bike owners, these people can give their customers the opportunity to rent bikes before they buy. 

Application scenarios:

A user wanting to rent a bike, first needs to create an account in our app through an email address and password or by connecting your account through Facebook, Apple ID or Google. After the successful log in, the user can start searching for bikes. The user has the option to either type in his location (city) to find bikes in his area or to use the advanced search to filter for certain bike types, the date of rental as well as the rental length, the bike size, the number of bikes and bike brands. He also has the option to sort his search results by price. Once the user has found a bike that he would like to rent, he gets provided with a booking overview and after confirming on the booking details, has to state a payment method. After the payment has been completed, the user gets to see the address of the bike owner, where he can pick up the bike. When the user picks up the bike, he has to confirm in the app that the bike is now in his possession. Once the user brings the bike back to his owner, he again has to confirm that the bike is now back in possession of the bike owner and he then has the option to rate the bike owners on a scale of 1 star to 5 stars. 

A bike owner wanting to rent out his bike, first needs to create an account in our app through an email address and password or by connecting your account through Facebook, Apple ID or E-Mail. After the successful log in, the user can start adding bike(s), available for rental, to his account. The user has to fill in details of his bikes like the bike type, bike size and the bike brand and he has to state the bike pick up location. Further he needs to specify the rental price as well as the rental duration and the possible time of pick up. The user also has the option to add a picture of his bike, to provide a short description and to state accessories like a bike lock or additional bike lights that are additionally provided to the bike renter. After the bike owner has provided all necessary bike details, the bike can be placed for rental. The user has the option to adjust the bike details at any time. In order to transfer the money earned from renting out a bike to the users bank account, he has to state a payment method. When the bike renter picks up the bike, the bike owner has to confirm in the app that the bike has been handed over to the bike renter. Once the bike renter brings the bike back to the owner, the bike owner again has to confirm that he has received the bike back and he then has the option to rate the bike renter on a scale of 1 star to 5 stars. 

Bike dealers using the app as bike owners follow nearly the same steps as normal bike owners do. The main difference is that the bike dealer appears as a business rather than as a private person. The app features a button that allows bike dealers to verify as a business and to appear as a bike dealer in the app. Hence, the bike dealers account name is the name of the bike store to clearly separate him from private bike owners. The bike store’s exact location is also visible to potential bike renters. 

Team
Lukas Kelter, Moritz Wolf and Niklas Schreiber

The Problems

In view of the intention to make the pass training of soccer players individual, gamified and appealing, big soccer clubs came up with the idea of introducing the Footbonaut1. The Footbonaut is an expensive high-tech machine. The 14 x 14 meter artificial turf surface is surrounded by grid walls consisting of 72 squares. Two ball machines are installed in the middle of each wall. The player standing in the center circle is passed a ball from where it previously 'beeped'. He accepts and passes into the square that lights up. The type and speed of the pass as well as the number of balls can be freely defined. Coach and player get a detailed result output with the hit rate and the average ball handling time. With the help of this soccer robot, professional soccer players can train their handling ability, passing accuracy, fast direction changes and some other essential game-relevant attributes. The big problem here is: It is not suitable for amateur clubs that do not have huge budget sums to buy and build the professional footbonaut.

Problem 1: Single Player. Amateur football players or clubs would like to be able to organize the passing training effectively and individually. Normally, several people are needed for the usual pass training because the ball does not come back automatically and someone has to announce where the player has to pass to. Here you could also use simple pass walls where the ball simply bounces back to the player. However, this way is not possible without a supervisor who randomly announces the targets to be played exactly at the right time. Furthermore, many amateur players, for example shift workers, could be forced to exercise on their own, without having their team members around. The underlying problem of usual passing training is that it is not independent of time and availability of other players or staff, which is stated as one of the reasons why kids stop playing soccer

Problem 2: Gamification. Another big problem especially for the younger generation is the shift of freetime activities from sports activities to computer games and other digital activities. One reason for the popularity of computer games are batches, leaderboards or highscores summarized under the term “Gamification”. If football players would like to improve their coordination, speed or accuracy of passing, they perform ungamified exercises with a coordination ladder or like duo-passing. Often these exercises tend to be rather boring tasks than exciting ones. Therefore, amateur football players seek for gamified passing exercise alternatives, which apply typical elements of game playing attributes (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play).

Problem 3: Data & Evaluation. Evaluations of individual players in terms of their passing accuracy and speed often tend to be biased. The problem with this is that independent performance data is not usually collected during passing drills to reflect how players are performing relative to each other. Amateur soccer players are not currently evaluated in a data-based manner so that they themselves and coaches can validate their skills in an unbiased manner. Gathering data could as well be used for evaluating young, promising players in the scouting departments of bigger clubs.

Problem 4: Costs. Probably the biggest problem as to why the three problems presented earlier have not yet been solved in amateur clubs together in one product is cost. In principle, there is already a solution to these problems: the Footbonaut. However, since it costs around 1 million euros, this cannot be a solution for amateur clubs and players. In addition, there is no comparable product on the market in the low price segment.

Our Solution

Our cost-effective solution for the problems mentioned above is called GroundPasser and fully targets the performance-oriented amateur football. The current Minimum Viable Product, which was built and developed within the EEB module in the summer semester 2021, initially consists of 3 setup walls held by screwed pillars. The envisaged later basic version shall consist of 4 walls and the premium version of 6 walls. They are about 40x100cm in size and were connected with intercommunicating Raspberry Pi's. Furthermore, the walls were equipped with small lights, which always lit up in random alternation. If a lamp lights up green, the player is to pass against the wall. Thereupon one of the vibration modules mounted on each wall detects the pass, whereafter the green light turns red and another new light randomly turns green. The player approaches the rebounding ball and passes it against the next wall that lights up green. Each play is time tracked so that the scores of all players are sent to a database in our GroundPasser webapp. There, individual performances can be evaluated and compared between players. With this solution at hand we tackle all of the four problems in one product solution. First, the prototype (excluded mass-market manufacturing discounts) costs only 293,96 €. Second and third, you can exercise your passing skills gamified and in single player mode. And fourth, players can receive unbiased data about the passing skills for further evaluation.

Application Scenarios

Gamified Passing Exercise. Training the passing game in soccer can often get boring, so this can be a good use case to gamify passing training. The theory of ‘gamification’ as a design approach for information systems describes the process of taking something that already exists (cycling) and integrating game principles to evoke participation, engagement, and loyalty. If the coach wants to improve the kids passing skills, but the kids often tend not to feel like it, he can use the GroundPasser. This is a fun way to improve passing skills because we have added simple gamification elements to the GroundPasser. For example, by measuring the times for a pass, some competition is created between players, increasing engagement with the actual activity.

Exercising passing in single player mode. With our GroundPasser, players can train their passing game individually from others at any time. You no longer have to coordinate when and who all comes to training, but can even theoretically start training alone in the garden. Normally, in a comparable normal passing exercise, one has to set up several goals and pass into them. Here, someone else will always spontaneously announce where the player has to pass to. In addition, you need someone to quickly retrieve the balls. These problems are solved by the GroundPasser, because the balls bounce back and the lights and sounds always tell you where to play. In addition, the time is measured automatically, so no one has to do this anymore. You can simply set up the GroundPasser, independent of others’ assistance and can efficiently improve your passing game.

Unbiased Trainee Evaluation. In order for coaches to treat and evaluate their players efficiently, effectively, and most importantly, fairly, data on their skills is a must-have. Since the GroundPasser evaluates the players' passing game in an unbiased way by simply stopping the time, we can provide the amateur soccer players with the necessary data about their passing performance and skills.

Target group of (semi-)amateur football clubs and players in the lower price segment. One of the major benefits of the GroundPasser is according to the slogan: “Train like professionals, without the budget of professionals!” The GrounPasser highly aims for soccer-enthusiastic amateurs who still want to take their passing game to the next level. Obviously, amateur clubs or players cannot invest millions of Euros in a highly complex "footbonaut" like top professional clubs do. Therefore, the GroundPasser is in an optimal price category of 500-700€, which amateur sports can well afford.

Team
C. Küpper, J. Schulz, K. Karaus, M. Donner